She's simply not capable of working in a stressful environment.
That's simply not something you could know from this. All we know is she gets anxiety attacks during written exams. You can't conclude she isn't capable of working in a stressful environment because of that, because the stressors involved are entirely different. I knew lots of people growing up who had lots of anxiety issues around stressful situations like tests or doing presentations in front of the class, but put them on the football field late in the 4th quarter on 3rd down with the game on the line and they thrive under the pressure.
If nothing else it proves that her emotional state is dependent on the actions of others and sooner or later the real world is going to let her down and she's going to freak out on the job. I don't want that to happen when she's doing my IV or or shaving my private parts getting ready for surgery.
It doesn't prove that it's inevitable she'll freak out any more than road rage proves someone will eventually fly off the handle at work.
Ooh goodness. Unfounded? She has a history of anxiety and depression and broke down and cried during an exam on IV medication. IV medication is lifesaving!
And I thought
I was supposed to be the one making baseless emotional appeals. It has nothing to do with IV medication. Having stress on an exam about IV medication doesn't mean she'll break down crying inserting an IV any more than me being stressed out for my managerial accounting exam means I'll be stressed out any time I have to calculate variable costs in the future.
Forty percent of the credits earned in the class were in clinical settings. She was already struggling, by her own admission. Either she was failing miserably at the lecture setting parts of the course while mastering the clinical portions, or she was struggling across the board. If this exam was the only thing that killed her ability to pass the course, then I would be more likely to accept the "she doesn't test well" argument, but that is not how she describes it in her own lawsuit. Look again. She was struggling to make it in general.
Yeah this part is definitely a lot more ambiguous. Without seeing the full syllabus and all the grades it's hard to know, some classes I've taken you had to pass the exam to pass the course regardless of what your grades were through the rest of the assignments. I still think it's fairly plausible that with 6/10 points coming from lecture settings her grades could be impacted enough to offset good grades in the clinical settings.
Was it to be a firefighter? I'd be in full support of the school. Was it to be a teacher? Then it isn't unreasonable to make an exception.
As far as I understand the school is not training people to be nurses, but teaching people
in nursing. Of course someone in a wheelchair can't be a firefighter, but someone in a wheelchair could certainly be a consultant, work for a fire department in an administrative role which requires the knowledge base of a firefighter, become a teacher, work in firefighter training, etc. I don't know all the details of the nursing field, but I'm sure there's some other way she'd be able to use this kind of education in a career.
I wanted to join the air force and become a test pilot as a kid. I wanted to be Chuck Yeager, maybe even become an astronaut. I have a heart condition. I was discriminated against due to a medical disability. Was that reasonable? Yes. Yes it was. The only legitimate complaint I have is that I got dealt a bad hand.
Of course, I wanted to be a fighter pilot when I was a kid too but I'm barred from that, police work, firefighting, etc. because I'm colourblind. I agree that it's reasonable neither of us can be fighter pilots, because there are health issues which make it essentially impossible for us to carry out the core functions of the job safely. This entire discussion hinges on whether or not you consider her anxieties as something which would prevent her from the core functions of the job.
Personally I don't believe that's true based on what we know. If it turns out she can't put in an IV or work in a hospital setting without anxiety attacks, then I'm all for it. What I disagree with is that we shouldn't accommodate for mental illnesses in an academic setting, because I don't agree that the ability to write tests without accommodations as something that's core to working as nurse in the same way having a heart healthy enough to fly a fighter jet, or eyes that can distinguish between differently coloured beacons on a runway is core to those jobs.
I don't care what your reasons are, I don't want you to be my nurse if you were struggling to be at the bottom of your graduating class. Call it an unfounded fear all you want, but most every other nurse got there without special circumstances and half of them were in the top half of their graduating class. So long as I am allowed to choose who my healthcare provider is, it will never be this woman, or someone from a similar case.
Of course, and that's your right in a free market health care system and your right as an individual. Part of the issue here is there's legislation about disability accommodations at school, in my ideal situation the school would be allowed to refuse any accommodations they felt were unreasonable. They would never do something like give a wheelchair bound student an exam room only accessible by stairs, but in these kinds of cases where it's more ambiguous I think legislation hurts more than it helps because it takes away the intuition from people who otherwise are allowed to use their judgment.
Person A graduated top honors from nursing school. Person B had high marks, but was just below the top 10 in the graduating class. Person C was an average student. Person D was at the bottom of their graduating class. Person E was at the bottom of their graduating class and had special accommodations to overcome anxiety and depression. Pick one that might be in a position to save your life one day.
All things being equal A, but I don't think we should conclude that E will never be capable of improving their skills. Of course the person at the top of a class is highly qualified, but I think there's a lot of variance in grades relative to performance. School, and especially a university level course are generally centered around a few specific skills which may or may not be relevant to your performance in your career. I've coasted by in school because I happen to have good language skills, I know people who are just as smart as me and will be just as capable accountants, but they'll never get better grades than me because they aren't as
Since she and her counselor describe it as
social anxiety, should we look at those triggers and consider whether or not nursing could cause an issue? Last I checked, being a good nurse requires a certain social skill, known as a bedside manner.
Now, I am not going to say that people with social anxiety shouldn't be nurses in general. I am sure some are able to overcome their problems. I will say that if social anxiety is making it hard to function then a large amount of treatment should be done before trying it or they should find a different career path.
Social anxiety is a really broad thing. I get social anxieties when it comes to going to parties, socializing at bars/clubs, etc. I am simply not comfortable with socializing in those environments in most cases. On the other hand, put me in front of a crowd of hundreds of people and I could give a great presentation off the cuff and I feel energized rather than anxious. I'm fine socializing in a professional context. I have friends who are the center of attention at a party and are great at networking and making friends, but they get very anxious about doing a powerpoint for class and hate job interviews.
She could very well have a fantastic bedside manner, but feel social anxiety from sitting in an exam hall with hundreds of other students. Or it could simply be social anxieties from general college socializing that stressed her out and made regular schoolwork difficult. Social anxieties doesn't mean poor social skills, it just means that in certain social settings you feel a fear or an anxiety that impacts your daily life, like feeling anxiety writing in a huge exam room.
I have had plenty of job applications that have asked if I have any issues that might prevent me from being able to perform the job duties. I answer them honestly. Do you think that she would list her pre-existing social anxiety and depression?
Not sure, but probably not. I don't disclose my diagnosis of ADD to employers because there's an absurd amount of misinformation about it. I talk about the difficulties I have with organization and time management, as well as talk about what helps for me (accountability). I don't bring up ADD because it's not the fact I have it that's the problem, it's the way the symptoms impair my life and performance that's the problem. I tell them honestly about my performance issues and what I need to be at my best, but I don't say I have ADD because it's a charged term and generally either not taken seriously or viewed as a character flaw.
Like I said earlier, think of accommodations as a prosthesis. For me to be successful at putting forth persistent effort towards a goal, I need external motivators. An imbalance in my brain means it's difficult to regulate my emotion, which makes it difficult to motivate myself to work towards a goal without an external motivator. If a manager checked up on me regularly I'd be able to stay on task. The challenge there is to realize that I haven't learned from this, I've only been able to stay on task because of the external motivator, not because I've internalized the habit. I consider these kinds of accommodations the same sort of thing.
The question is first whether or not you think the prosthesis can reasonably be used in the job. I would say no, we've already said there won't be special assignments and quiet rooms in a busy ER. The second question is whether or not she'll need the prosthesis in her job. I don't believe she will, because I don't think anxiety in a school setting is inherently present in a hospital setting. I do fully understand and see why some would disagree. Ultimately the issue is like most of this stuff, the ability of qualified people to use their judgment has been taken away by suits in Washington.
My sympathies go to her as it's a PITA and beyond frustrating to have when your vocation is healthcare. Unfortunately there's no getting around exams even if she was to have chosen a less patient facing career in nursing (e.g. research). Will be interesting to see how this plays out in court.
The court case itself isn't concerned with whether or not she's capable of being a nurse or if it's the right career for her. All the court would be doing is deciding whether or not she is to be awarded damages as compensation for the tuition wasted after failing the course, and then perhaps awarding damages for mental anguish as a separate discussion. The court won't be awarding her a degree or granting her an accreditation as a nurse.
. Of course the shopkeeper may close because he can't stand having hundreds of dollars shoplifted every day, but at least your kid won't be humiliated
